Dawkins’ The God Delusion and the Existence of God

You may have been wondering what has taken me so long to get this post up.  Well, even bloggers need some vacation now and again.  But now I am back and raring to go!

I am still reading The God Delusion, but I wanted to go ahead and start the discussion.  Let me begin by saying that I do respect Richard Dawkins as a biologist.  In many ways he has made the evolutionary process more accessible to the everyday man and generally increased the public’s interest in science.  However, when Dawkins moves beyond biology into philosophy, his logic begins to acquire holes.

For those of you who don’t know, my wife and I lived in Oxford, where Dawkins resides, last autumn and winter.  I was then studying for a Master’s in Economics, but that is a whole story on its own.  Needless to say, I decided that the field of Economics was not the best fit for me, which is why we are now back in America.  But while we were there, we had the privilege of partaking in the general philosophical atmosphere of many an Oxford evening.  I was lucky enough to attend a few lectures given by members of the philosophy faculty discussing bioethics and science in general.  I was surprised to hear that among the philosophers at Oxford, many found Dawkins’ arguments unimpressive, hardly worthy of a serious response.

So Dawkins has failed to win over even those within his own town who, at least by academic standards, are masters of argument and logic.  But most people are more easily convinced by someone like Dawkins speaking with authority.  So I do think his arguments deserve a response. I would like to begin my own response with some thoughts on Chapter 4 in The God Delusion, “Why There Almost Certainly Is No God.”

Dawkins basic points in this chapter are as follows:
Any argument for a designer is rooted in an attempt to explain complexity.  However, we have found that natural selection is capable of explaining the rise of complexity from simple precursors.  So where we thought we needed a designer to explain the evolution of life, we were wrong.  He then points out that physics has not yet found its unifying, explanatory principle (a principle analogous to natural selection).  But Dawkins thinks that the multiverse theory may be on the right track.  He concludes that natural selection has “raised our consciousness” to realize that nature itself is capable of producing all of these complex wonders, and that we should now see there is no need for a God; nature is capable of doing everything herself.  We just haven’t yet figured out how it works in physics.

This argument is simply the inverse of the creationist argument.  Creationists say: “We can’t explain nature, so there must be a God.”  Dawkins says: “We can explain nature, so there must not be a God.”  Neither of these arguments is logical.  The existence or nonexistence of God in no way follows directly from our ability either to explain or not explain how nature works.  The only thing that we can show as a result of being able to explain nature scientifically is that if there is a God, he is not forced to interact with nature.  But even that does not mean that if God exists that he must not interact with nature.

Now it is obvious that Dawkins is focused on addressing ID advocates, so I can understand his desire to prove them wrong, but proving the IDers wrong is not the same as proving God doesn’t exist.  The latter requires a much more rigorous proof, and I don’t think Dawkins provides one.  At least, by the time he finishes his discussion of “Why There Almost Certainly Is No God,” he has not done so.

The first key omission in the chapter is a discussion of final cause.  I talked about this some in my post on the Anthropic Priniciple and elaborated in the comments, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a quick rehash.  Dawkins seems to think that if we can explain the origins of this universe, perhaps by a multiverse theory, that we would have a final cause therein.  But just as Dawkins asks who designed the designer, I would ask what came before the multiverse or how did the multiverse begin.  If there really was some sort of infinitely existing multiverse that stretched back into eternity past, then science would never be able to delineate it.  Anything that is causeless is beyond what we know in nature.  If we found such an infinite material thing in nature (not infinite going forward, but infinite going backward), science could not explain it.

Dawkins speaks as if this multiverse is a simple theory, and that God is too complex to be probable, but anything that has always existed is already on a plane of complexity much higher than anything we have ever observed.  And since all of the natural sciences operate on the fact that 100% of our observations have a natural cause, then I am very suspicious of anyone proposing that something material could have no cause.  That is contrary to all science that has ever been done.  If I am going to accept the idea that anything has existed forever, it is certainly not going to be something material.

The other possibility is that something, whether the Big Bang, the multiverse, or something else, was really the absolute first thing to exist.  But this idea is just as causeless as an infinite multiverse.  If some material came first, it too would lack an explanation for how it arose.  This would defy science just as much as anything else.  In fact, this problem is precisely why things like the multiverse have been proposed.  We have no evidence whatsoever for a multiverse, but science wants desperately to explain the origins of the Big Bang.  Surely the singularity hadn’t just been sitting there forever!  But either there was a first or there was something infinite.  Neither can be explained by natural means.  So to explain a final cause, we must consider knowledge other than just science.  Either that, or we must accept that we are always incapable of knowing.

This gaping hole in the argument does not leave me satisfied with Dawkins’ conclusion from science that there must be no God.  However, deciding that Dawkins’ argument against the existence of God is not strong does not mean that a God exists.  That is, we cannot apply Dawkins’ own logic and say, “Dawkins is wrong; therefore, God exists.”  I do not accept that science can disprove God; nor do I accept that science can prove God.  So we must operate on other information available to us.

This brings us to the second big fault in Dawkins’ argument.  He (as far as I can tell) ignores many other relevant pieces of information in his quest to disprove God.  Now I know that in subsequent chapters Dawkins is going to address specific problems with religion, so forgive me if he addresses this later and I have not reached it yet.  If that is the case, I will revise this article upon reaching it.  But I feel that Dawkins’ scientific approach is very limiting.  I might agree with Dawkins’ conclusion if I had to make my decision based only on science, but that is not the case, and I believe evidence from other realms makes belief in God completely rational.

In my opinion, one of the strongest evidences for something beyond the material world is the existence of a moral law.  I do not mean to explain altruism, for which I know Dawkins has a biological argument.   We all ascribe to some sort of moral law when we say that something is “not fair.”  We all agree that harming an innocent child or spreading false rumors is bad.  Sometimes you can even see this moral law in action from the mouths of criminals.  Someone who has committed a heinous crime and has come to realize just how terrible the crime was can sometimes be heard saying (and not simply in court) that they “deserve punishment.”

In some simple form, we all recognize this moral law, and importantly, it is external to us.  We do not alter it, and it does not have a material cause.  Where does this law then come from?  It must come from something outside of the material realm.  But really I have taken this whole argument from C.S. Lewis, and he is much better at explaining it than I am.  You can get a better picture by reading the first five or six chapters in Mere Christianity (they are short chapters).  I’m not entirely sure how legal this is, but you can find the whole book online here, so please check it out.

While I think it is possible that altruism could be influenced by biology, I do not think the moral law is a byproduct of genetics.  So that is just one philosophical argument for the existence of God, one that is unmentioned in Dawkins’ chapter concerning arguments for the existence of God.

In conclusion, I do not find Dawkins’ argument against the existence of God very convincing.  It is severely limited by only discussing scientific reasoning, and the logic that he uses as a result of the science is very faulty.  And even from a scientific standpoint, he does not even attempt to explain some of the most difficult questions about final cause.

As a Christian, I also obviously believe that the Bible provides reliable, rational evidence for God.  Dawkins does address this view in a rather vitriolic fashion, so in my next post I will begin to discuss his understanding of the Bible and where I think his conclusions are inaccurate.  In particular I will talk about the Old Testament, miracles, and the character of God.

Coming up soon…

I have recently acquired Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and have begun to read it.  Previously I had read portions of it in various bookstores and whatnot, but this time as I go through I will be writing on the topics that he addresses, depending on how much I have to say.  If I get boring, just let me know and I will cut to the chase (I know I can be excessively verbose sometimes).  But I think it will be interesting, especially since Dawkins is so often cited in argument and his views are so polarizing.  So it should be fun!

It’s no secret that I disagree with many of Dawkins’ theses, so those of you on his side should be sure to chime in with your thoughts.  Thus far I have read about 100 pages and I have been slightly disappointed by his arguments.  He is a lucid and entertaining writer, but for someone so concerned with rationality, he abandons thorough thinking too often, opting to attack oversimplified versions of complex beliefs.

Anyway, I know so far that I will certainly have to discuss miracles and Dawkins’ view of them, and I know that later in the book he has a chapter covering the probability of the existence of God, so that will also be discussed.  Other than that, we will see what comes up.

Please comment on this post for topics (related to Dawkins or not) that you would like me to discuss, from any realm.

Anthropic Coincidences

This post is likely to be the most controversial for Christians who accept evolution that I have written so far.  Just a warning.

To many Christians who accept evolution, the anthropic coincidences are of vital importance.  The argument goes as follows: many forces of nature are fine-tuned such that if any one of them were different, human life would never have been possible (e.g., the force of gravity, the strong or weak nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, among many others, and, more importantly, their ratios with respect to each other).  For a typical Christian explanation of this perspective, see here.

Many Christians who accept evolution use this argument as evidence for a God.  Sure, evolution happened; sure, the universe is 14 billion years old.  No problems there.  But the fine-tuning of the universe surely points to an omnipotent God who constructed the universe with the appropriate physical laws to ensure humanity would arise.  It is certainly true that if any number of the laws of nature were just slightly different, humanity would not have existed.  I do not dispute that fact.  But I do not think the anthropic principle is a good argument for God.  In my opinion, the only scientific argument for the existence of God that will never be disproven is the fact that matter exists.  (If you want to get technical, I could have said the fact that antimatter exists, or some other fundamental that produces matter.)  Let me explain myself.

I think the main problem with the anthropic principle is that it is unimaginative.  If evolution happens, would we not expect to see life that is adapted to the universe in which it is found?  Human life is perfectly adapted to a set of circumstances found in this universe on one particular planet.  If we lived in a different universe with different laws of nature, we would naturally conclude that we were well-adapted to that universe’s laws.  But that does not mean that those laws were specifically chosen for our existence.

That might seem blasphemous to some Christians, but let’s consider a more localized example.  For an ocean-dwelling fish, the laws of nature are all the same, but there are some additional local “laws” to which it must conform.  For instance, it must be able to procure oxygen from water.  It must be able to tolerate the ocean’s salinity and temperature and pH.  If any of these “laws” were different, we would not expect to see the same fish.  And in fact, we know that when salinity, temperature, or pH changes even slightly, the changes often have a drastic effect on fish survival.  If the “laws” were completely different, if there was no longer such a thing as an ocean, or if water no longer contained oxygen but rather sulfur in its place, obviously we would not see the same fish.  But that does not mean that we would see nothing.  We might even see something that resembled a fish, but it would not require oxygen and it would be able to tolerate the conditions in which it lived.  For the fish, the ocean and its “laws” are the starting point; the fish evolved to cope in that situation.

For humanity it is much the same.  The laws of nature are the starting point; humanity evolved to cope in that situation.  If the laws were different, we would not be here as we are today, but we might still exist with a different body construction, different needs, and different abilities.  Or something completely different but just as intelligent might be here in our place.  Thus, the first problem with the anthropic principle is that it tries to explain the existence of certain beginning conditions with an outcome.  Humanity is not a good explanation for the set of natural laws.  The natural laws are a good explanation for humanity.  Life is not a result of fine-tuned laws; life itself is fine-tuned to the laws.

The second and related problem with the anthropic principle is that it assumes that life as we know it is the only possible type of life. But I think it is unreasonable to believe that all different sets of laws would completely prohibit the evolution of life.  We have no reason to think, for instance, that life must always be carbon-based.  That is what we observe, yes, but in a universe with different laws, we have no reason to believe that carbon must be the key ingredient.  For further reading, see here or here (a site with more links).

The view I have been describing raises a few theological questions about humanity.  Is humanity special?  Was humanity really destined to exist or was it just chance?  I would like to point out first of all that what makes humanity special in God’s eyes is the fact that we bear his image, as described in Genesis 1 and 2.  According to most interpretations, the “image of God” in humanity has nothing to do with our physical shape, but everything to do with our spirit, the “spark of the divine” that God put within us.  So in my opinion, the physical shape of the human body is irrelevant to God’s purposes.

Evolutionists often refer to Gould and others who say that if the evolutionary tape were played over again, it is extremely improbable that we would see the same results, and it is quite possible that humanity would never have existed.  Frankly, I don’t see a problem with this idea.  If dinosaurs had not gone extinct and reptiles dominated Earth today, I bet that God would have chosen some smart lizard as the bearer of his image.  God might have said, “Let us make lizards in our image.”  Is that really such a problem?  The image of God is found in consciousness and in the ability to make moral decisions, not in a physical form.

However, it must be pointed out that humanity did arise.  If we believe in the God of the Bible, then God knew humanity would arise in this universe.  But for all we know, God could be watching several universes unfold right now: one in which dinosaurs received his image, one in which beavers received his image, and one in which humans received his image (this universe).  Humanity is only really specially in that it is a receptacle of the divine.

As a result of all this, I do not think the anthropic principle is a good argument for the existence of God.  Even if this is the only universe and God did fine-tune it to produce humanity, there is really no way we could ever verify it, and the argument is easy to attack.  So I think Christians should take a different perspective.  What I think is much more important is the fact that, regardless of the laws of nature, something must have spawned the Big Bang.  There are many theories from science concerning this.  Most prominent among them is the Multiverse theory, the theory that our universe is only one of many, that there were innumerable “Big Bangs” in some sort of cosmic birthplace, and that each Bang led to a universe with some set of laws.  Many Bangs did/will not produce life-bearing universes, but some will, and ours is one of them.

Sure, why not?

Here is where science loses its potency.  We are incapable of ever peering back prior to the Big Bang.  I have not heard any convincing explanations for how the existence of a Multiverse could be verified because of this limitation, but even if the Multiverse is confirmed, where did the Multiverse come from?  Well, perhaps there is a larger multi-Multiverse.  Ok fine – where did that come from?

My point is that science is incapable of ever offering a final cause.  Science deals with material causes only.  If it ever finds something without a beginning, its methods would be worthless for explaining it.  So either everything does have a beginning, in which case science cannot explain a truly final cause for the first thing, or we find something which has no beginning and then realize that science is inadequate in the first place.  Either way, science does not provide any explanation for an ultimate beginning.

At that point it comes down to faith.  Do you have faith in something creating itself or do you have faith in something else, something beyond the physical, creating it?  For me, it is much easier to believe that something intelligent created whatever physical entity was first, and that something intelligent would necessarily have to transcend the physical.  I have a lot of trouble believing that a Multiverse (or whatever physical thing existed first) simply came into being without cause.

In conclusion, I deduce that the anthropic principle is not a good argument for the existence of God since it is only natural that the life we see is well-adapted to the conditions of the universe.  But scientific proposals for the origins of the universe do not satisfy the need for a final cause and are incapable of doing so.

What do you think?

Book Review by Guest Writer! See below.

The post just beneath this one is a book review contributed by my father, Don Waldroup.  He and I have taken similar roads, and he has had a significant impact on my personal reconciliation of faith and science.  We do differ in opinion on a few small points, but they are not very substantial.

An avid reader, he will be contributing book reviews as he wishes.  He has read quite a few books on the topic at hand, so it is very fitting for him to do so.  If you want to check out some of his other thoughts on various topics, check out his blog, Dad-ISMs.

Thanks for the contribution Dad!

Book Review – God’s Universe by Owen Gingerich

This review was contributed by Don Waldroup, Jonathan’s father (see previous post for more info).

Of the numerous books about the origin of the universe and faith that I have read, God’s Universe is one of my favorites. It is the written version of the William Belden Noble Lecture Series that Gingerich delivered at Harvard in 2005. Professor Gingerich is a professor of astronomy and the history of science at Harvard. He is also a devout Mennonite for whom faith and science are not at odds. The Mennonites are similar to the Amish, in the Anabaptist tradition (i.e., supporting adult rather than infant baptism), pacifist, and strongly focused on the Scriptures though not rejecting all of modernity as the Amish do. The book is a relatively small volume of 121 pages, which I read comfortably during a plane ride to Wisconsin.

As you might expect from a lecture series, it has a conversational style and is addressed to a lay audience, which makes it very accessible and pleasant to read. It is also written with a friendly and warm but direct tone that is in stark contrast to some of the recent ‘militant’ atheist tomes. This book/lecture series builds upon earlier lectures he delivered at the University of Pennsylvania and which he describes as ‘pro-Christian/anti-Creationism.’ He argues that the universe was created with intention and purpose, and that believing in that does not interfere with the enterprise of science.

The first chapter examines what has been called the Copernican Principle, the idea that we are just one of many similar planets in one of many solar systems with nothing really special to distinguish this one. This implies that in such a vast universe, containing 10¹¹ stars in the Milky Way alone, there must be other intelligent life out there, so we are nothing special, nor is the earth. This idea spawned the SETI efforts (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), created a controversy when the Smithsonian showed a movie entitled The Privileged Planet a few years ago, and helps undergird (along with evolutionary philosophy) the idea that human life is no more special than any other life form.

Steven J. Gould, Ernst Mayr, Irven DeVore and other evolutionist atheists insist that if the ‘evolutionary tape’ could be rewound and played again, the result would be entirely different as a result of randomness. However, Prof. Gingerich points out that in this way ‘science’ wants to have it both ways: on the one hand to insist that with such a vast universe there must be intelligent life out there somewhere (and go searching for it via the SETI project), while on the other hand insisting that human life is no more than a glorious accident that would not happen again even if given the chance. He then references some of the so-called anthropic coincidences (the solubilities, diffusion constant, bonding strengths, nature of carbon/oxygen/water, etc) that allow life. While he allows that contingency and natural selection do play a role in accounting for producing organisms well adapted to their surroundings, nothing in evolution can address the extraordinary array of physical and chemical conditions that allow life in the first place. Physics is a more important issue than biology in that regard. His personal conclusion is that the universe was predestined to produce both life and the mind.

The second lecture surveys the origin of the universe and some of the key anthropic coincidences he had mentioned earlier, such as how the expansion force of the Big Bang and the force of gravity must be balanced to within 1 part in 10⁵⁹ or else the universe would have self-destructed without life, the remarkable properties of water and carbon, how oxygen is formed, and why oxygen and carbon require an old universe. He concludes that he believes in intelligent design (small ‘i’ and small ‘d’) but not Intelligent Design.  He points out that a key issue is not whether mutations happen, but which mutations are designed versus contingent. He asks, ‘are mutations only a result of blind chance or is God’s miraculous hand continually at work, disguised in the ambiguity of  the uncertainty principle?’ This is at the end a debate about the role and nature of miracles, as others have also pointed out. His position is that science cannot determine such things, nor will science collapse or be threatened if its practitioners believe that key mutations were ‘inspired.’ Science would be unable to recognize a mutation that was hand-picked by God, so to say, from any other mutation.

He correctly points out that the militant atheism of such as Dawkins ‘single-handedly makes more converts to Intelligent Design than any of the leading Intelligent Design theorists’. I think he is spot-on here: many Christians react to the arrogance, vitriol, and atheism of evolutionists much more than to the science. He goes on to point out that ‘it is just as wrong to present evolution in high school classrooms as a final cause as it is to fob off Intelligent Design as a substitute for an efficacious efficient cause.’  He accepts a God of purpose and design and a science that limits itself to understanding efficient causes, rejecting the materialist metaphysics that many evolutionists seek to sell as part-and-parcel of their science.

The final lecture deals with ‘questions without answers’, pointing out the limits of science. He notes altruism, freedom and choice must also be considered, as well as things like beauty and consistency, which also play into what is accepted in science.  He concludes again that whether the mutations driving evolution are random or hopelessly improbable based on randomness alone is a question beyond the reach of science. He ends in the epilogue with his conclusion to believe in a ‘dappled world’ (quoting Gerard Manley Hopkins) in which randomness and chance join with choice and inexorable law. It is ‘both and’ not ‘either or’. This reminds me of how predestination and sovereignty co-exist with free will and choice in the Bible.

While these brief lectures do not go into scientific depth in any of these areas, the book does a good job of surveying many of the key issues, highlighting the limits of science, and pointing out where metaphysics (philosophy) gets in the way of science. Those wanting to quibble about details in a particular example will be disappointed, but those looking for an overview that is not over-heated by opinion will find it useful. It reminded me of why, in matters of origins, physics precedes and controls biology, how the debate of the content of classrooms needs to be re-framed, and how the limits of science need more emphasis among Christians seeking the truth in both science and philosophy.

The Amalekite Issue in more detail

I want to add a few notes about the Amalekites.  I received a question asking for further thoughts specifically addressing the fact that God explicitly orders the death of the Amalekite women, children, and infants.  Even if the Amalekites were evil, that doesn’t warrant inhumane action, particularly concerning the children and infants, does it?  Wouldn’t it have been better for the Israelites to have adopted the infants and raised them to be godly?

Most Christian responses center on the fact that God is just, so there must have been a reason.  Others say that the presence of the foreigners would have caused Israel to reject God.  This is based on Exodus 34:11-16 where God talks about the Israelites being led astray to foreign gods.  But the context describes this possibility if Israel were to make covenants with the Canaanites, and I don’t think this is adequate justification for the destruction of children and infants.

So what is the answer?  My answer may not satisfy, but I will give it a shot.

First of all, the idea of “devoting something to destruction,” as is presented in the passage in 1 Samuel 15:3 about the Amalekites, is used in a few other places.  It meant that the Israelites were not allowed to take spoil from the defeated as they usually would.  The offending people were so evil that their spoil was off limits, and their destruction was a sort of sacrifice to God.  This idea is used for the fall of Jericho (Josh. 6:21), Ai (Josh. 8:26), Makedah (Josh. 10:28), and Hazor (Josh. 11:11).  But we know that even though the Israelites devoted these to destruction, that did not always mean everyone was killed.  As I mentioned before, Rahab was not killed in Jericho, and I’m sure there were other unmentioned righteous people.  Also, following the law for warfare required offers of peace, as I also mentioned.  This means that it is likely many women and children fled before the destruction of the cities, since they would have known of the impending attack.  This is not verified, but that is a usual course of action in war.  Only the soldiers and the most steadfast remain in the city under siege.

But there is another interesting point about the Amalekite destruction.  It is the only instance where the “devote to destruction” idea is used in which children and infants are also specifically listed as targets.  Some of the other passages discuss the killing of women or the killing of both “young and old,” but as I discussed, most women were probably not present, and “young” is often used to refer to anyone under 30 years of age.  So those deaths were probably not so inhumane as would be the killing of infants.

But in the Amalekite case, the Israelites do NOT actually “devote everything to destruction.”  It is a unique case.  God tells them to kill everything, but what do they actually do?

“But Saul and the people spared Agag [the Amalekite king] and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them.  All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction.”  1 Sam. 15:9

Again, while it is not certain, infants and children were either probably not around or were not considered “despised and worthless.”  What is more important, I think, is the juxtaposition of this story with the story of Abraham and Isaac.  Here is the only instance in which God commands the killing of infants and children explicitly, and here is also the only instance in which his commandment for destruction is not carried out.  Could it be that the order was simply a test for the obedience of Israel just like when Abraham was ordered to kill his only son Isaac?

After Saul does not kill all the Amalekites and keeps the spoil for himself, the prophet Samuel tells him that God has rejected him as king because he is not obedient.

But God knows all things, and he knew Saul and the Israelites would not obey.  Samuel says to Saul that “to obey is better than sacrifice” after this incident.  The Amalekites were essentially to be a sacrifice to God, but the act of obeying God was more important than the actual sacrifice of the Amalekites, just as in the case of Isaac. I think it is at least a possibility that just as God spared Isaac despite his commandment to kill him, that God might have spared the infant Amalekites if it was clear that the Israelites were willing to be obedient.

So maybe those infants were never really destined for destruction.  If they were, I am unsure as to the explanation.  But I think the parallel with Abraham is significant, especially because of Samuel’s response to Saul’s disobedience.  And I think that should be taken into account in considering the unique order to kill the infants and children.

For those of you more interested in the science we have been discussing, fear not!  We will go back to our usual topic starting with the next post.

Biblical Interpretation and God’s Judgment

As a slight tangent from our usual topics, I would like to discuss the issue of God’s wrath and judgment, particularly in the Old Testament.  As one of our readers has pointed out, Christians these days like to talk about the love and grace of God but either neglect the wrath and judgment or explain it away as old fashioned.  Sometimes well-intentioned Christians will even expand their figurative readings of Genesis to include the entire Old Testament, saying that just as Adam and Eve were probably not real people and there was not a global Flood, so all those stories of fire, brimstone, slaughter, and destruction are just metaphors.  I, though, am unsure what those metaphors might be.

No, if our figurative reading of Genesis is going to stand, our readings of other passages in the Bible must also be based on sound thinking.  Reading the historical books of the Old Testament in the same way as Genesis is completely unfounded.  There is no reason to believe they are figurative.  In fact, modern archaeology has corroborated many histories recorded in the Old Testament.  So when God tells the Israelites to completely wipe out the Amalekites, for instance, we must accept that they really did so.

That obviously raises some questions about God, questions that come up very often but are seldom answered.  I will attempt an answer, but I assure you that just as I am not the originator of my information on evolution, I am also not the originator of this explanation.  There is rarely such a thing as a truly novel idea.

First we must deal with the idea of God’s holiness.  If we believe the Bible, then there is a God and he is perfect.  There is no sin in him, and he cannot dwell in the presence of sin.  Thus, for anyone to have a relationship with God, that person must be perfect.  If he is not perfect (like everyone), then there must be something that renders him perfect in the sight of God, and that something is a sacrifice.  We are told in many places in the Bible that death is the punishment for sin – something must die for our sins.  In the Old Testament, animals died for the sins of the people.  Then in the New Testament Jesus provided himself as the eternal sacrifice for our sins.

One may ask why God can’t just forgive our sins and be done with it, foregoing all the bloodiness.  But blanket forgiveness without atonement would go against the very nature of God.  If he is truly good, then he must be against evil.  God would not really be opposed to evil if he treated it the same as he treated goodness.  Can you imagine calling a parent “good” if they always let their children do evil things without consequence?  Of course not!  To be good requires judgment upon evil.

So the Bible tells us that the judgment for sin without atonement is death.  As is common thought among Christians, this death is manifested as eternal separation from God, which makes sense if God cannot be in the presence of sin.

It is important to note that God wants all people to have atonement, but not all accept.  In many verses, it is clear that God gives many chances for people to accept atonement, and that it is only after a person has completely rejected the offer with finality that God judges him.  That is, God does not close the door prematurely.  So when someone dies, it can be assumed that the person had made up his mind about atonement.  Either he accepted or he rejected.  Only God knows when a person has completely made this decision, but when it has happened, that person is “ready to die” in an eternal sense.  Since only God knows the state of our hearts, he is the only one who can render the judgment of death, which would obviously close the door for any more decisions about atonement.

In the Old Testament, God often doles out judgment through conquest and the like.  Most people are shocked at God’s brutality when they read verses like the following:

“Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have.  Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”  1 Samuel 15:3

Similar responses are produced from other commands of God to wipe out the people who live in Canaan as the Israelites took hold of it.

So what is the deal with God just killing people left and right?  If these are “judgments,” then they must be based on evil.  It would be against God’s nature to kill a bunch of innocent people, so what are we overlooking?  With the Amalekites there is a fairly simple explanation.  In Exodus 17 you can read about how the Amalekites tried to destroy the Israelites after they had left Egypt.  The issue is more specifically addressed in Deuteronomy:

“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God.  Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.”  Deut. 25:17-18

It seems to me, then, that God was mostly concerned with keeping the Israelites in existence.  And for those of us who consider Jesus as the Messiah, having the Israelites around was pretty important.  Also, the passage above says that the Amalekites “did not fear God.”  This could mean any number of things, but according to the nature of God, we know he gives all people the chance for atonement, so if God was going to wipe out a group of people, that implies the people were so depraved and callous that they had completely rejected God with finality.  Additionally, God commanded that peace always be offered before a fight.  In Deuteronomy 20, when detailing the laws of war, God says, “When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it.”  They would not kill anyone if the offer of peace was accepted.  Obviously the Amalekites were not into peace talks if they were attacking weak stragglers.

As I just stated, God only wiped out groups that were completely hopeless, utterly depraved and evil.  Perhaps this played into the situation with the Amalekites, though it is not explicitly recorded.  It would be a logical conclusion because that is the reason why God has the Israelites kill many of the people groups in the Promised Land.  When God is about to give Israel the Promised Land, he makes it clear that Israel is not gaining the land because they are righteous:

“Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”  Deut. 9:5

So his reasons for having Israel kick out the other people are that (1), the inhabitants are exceedingly evil and in need of judgment and (2), to show his faithfulness to the Israelites.  I do not think God would have had Israel wage war on the inhabitants had they been righteous.  I imagine the inhabitants would have allowed the Israelites to live there along with them and God would have been just fine with that.  And just so you know what God considers wicked, the actions of the inhabitants are described elsewhere:

“For every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.” Deut. 12:31

Apparently it was clear to God that these people had made up their minds to completely reject righteousness, so their judgment was justified.  And let me emphasize again that warnings were almost surely given so that the righteous would not be punished.  As seen in Genesis 18 and 19 in the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, God was going to spare the cities if there were only ten righteous people in them, but there were not even that many.  Even so he allows Lot and his family to escape because of Abraham’s righteousness (Lot was Abraham’s nephew).  The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were so far gone, though, that they were judged.

Based on the fact that God would have spared a depraved society for only ten good people, it is reasonable to believe that when God had Israel destroy other groups that those groups were completely evil.  But even in the destruction of Jericho, mercy is shown for Rahab, who, despite the fact that she was a prostitute, was considered righteous because of her decisions.  As is consistent with God’s nature, he spared the righteous from judgment.  Whether recorded or not, God surely spared the righteous in other places as well.

So I hope it is a little clearer that God does not indiscriminately destroy people.  He gives them all the chance to choose righteousness.  But he alone knows the hearts of all men, and if we believe that, then it is well within his right to judge those who have decided to reject righteousness completely.

Part of the reason this concept is so foreign to us today is that ultimate judgment after Christ is reserved for the end of time.  In the Old Testament, judgment is often rendered out in history – God has cities destroyed, people killed, etc., both in Israel and in other nations.  This is probably because of their limited understanding of heaven and hell, which are not fully established until the New Testament.  But then once those concepts are elucidated, judgment is always depicted in that more eternal way.  For some, that makes judgment easier to ignore.  For the Israelites, it was not very easy to ignore – all of God’s instruments of judgment lived right next door.

To summarize, God’s goodness requires he be just, which requires judgment of sin.  In the Old Testament this judgment is often given out, but there is always justification and God does not punish the righteous.  Reason requires that we accept that this judgment did actually occur, but it is consistent with the nature of God.  Likewise, God still judges evil in the New Testament, but he holds off his ultimate judgment until the end of time.  So the God of the Old and New Testaments are not different concerning judgment.  In both, evil is judged.

I hope I have made it clear that accepting a figurative interpretation of Genesis does not justify ignoring tricky passages that are obviously literal, and those passages do have an explanation.  Biblical interpretation is not just about reading a passage how you want to read it; it’s about reading a passage how it should be read according to reason, context, audience, history, and truth.

Biblical Interpretation and Near Eastern Creation Myths

There have been a few questions recently about Biblical interpretation, particularly as it relates to a literal reading of Genesis.  In this post I will discuss my thoughts on Biblical interpretation in general and then discuss one aspect in more detail.

First we should discuss the general principles.  I am no expert on hermeneutics, but I follow a few simple guidelines when interpreting the Bible myself.  These can be summarized as follows, in no particular order:

1) Audience – the Bible was intended to teach an ancient people.  Modern scientific or cultural explanations would have only confused them.  So we should always strive to deduce what the passage meant to its original audience.  In this way, Biblical interpretation is much like literary explication.
2) Context – read any scripture in light of other scripture.  If it is all true, there shouldn’t be any inexplicable contradictions.  Furthermore, many scriptures clarify other scriptures.
3) Commentary – find out what wise people have said, especially if they are dead.  Dead people aren’t very good at defending their arguments, so there is generally a good reason if their thoughts are still widely held.  Obviously not all the dead people will agree, though, so this guideline is best for widening your current perspective.  Some of my favorite deceased folks are CS Lewis, GK Chesterton, and JRR Tolkien, among others.
4) Logic – interpret literally unless there is a good reason not to.

So why have I arrived at a figurative interpretation of Genesis?  Let’s skip the first guideline for a minute, but I will return to it shortly.  Guideline 2 isn’t much help to me since the idea of evolution has only been around for 150 years or so.  Thus, the entire Bible was written from the same primitive understanding of science.  So when people use New Testament passages to support the idea that Adam and Eve were actual people, I do not find the argument very convincing.  Just like the early Israelites, Paul and the other New Testament writers would have likely thought Adam and Eve were historical, even if they did grasp their symbolic importance.  In light of science today, we have reason to adopt a different approach.

Concerning guideline 3, I have pointed out that many church fathers including Origen, St. Augustine, and others like St. Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley were all quite open to a figurative interpretation of Genesis (as was CS Lewis).  There are many different types of literature in the Bible.  There are histories (Kings and Chronicles), poetry (Psalms and many of the prophets), letters (the New Testament Epistles), law (Leviticus), and many other categories and subcategories.  For each type of literature, the reader must consider the author’s intent, the audience’s perspective, the theme, etc., just like in high school lit class.  Genesis is obviously tricky, but I am not the first to interpret it figuratively.

And then there is guideline 4, which is self-explanatory, but demands a good reason for my non-literal approach to Genesis.  For some preliminary thoughts, see my “On Genesis” post.  Now I will consider another reason, based on guideline 1 – audience.

As one of our reader’s has mentioned, the Genesis creation story is similar in many ways to other Near Eastern creation accounts, but it also differs substantially.  The most striking similarities between Genesis and other Near Eastern creation stories (especially Babylonian – found in the Enuma Elish, Atrahasis, the Epic of Creation, and, to some extent, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of Adapa) are the following:

• the state of the universe before creation as darkness/chaos, watery
• the order of creation – the only difference between Genesis and the Enuma Elish is that the Enuma Elish omits animal creation.  Otherwise, both stories list the creative order thus:
  • light
  • firmament (in both cases, a separation of primeval waters)
  • land
  • sun, moon, stars
  • humanity
  • rest
• the fact that man is made from clay (or dirt)

It makes sense that the Israelites would have had a similar understanding of the universe to that of their neighbors.  But if Genesis were the same story, there would have been no point in writing it.

While Genesis establishes a similar cosmology to that of other ancient Near Eastern (NE) groups, it differs in some very important ways:

• In the NE stories, people are created for the gods to basically provide slave labor.  The Earth was for the gods, not for man.  In Genesis, man was the centerpiece and greatest work of God; man was the reason for creation.
• In the other stories, the creation is a result of conflict among the gods.  In Genesis creation is portrayed as calmly controlled and directed by God; there is no conflict.
• Genesis is monotheistic; the other stories are polytheistic.
• A resting time is common among the stories, but in NE stories, the gods need a rest from their hard work and they later bring a flood because they cannot find rest from the obnoxious humans.  In Genesis, God takes rest though he does not seem to need one, and he is portrayed throughout the Bible as resting in a dwelling place because it is good, not because he is tired.
• Genesis also establishes that God enjoys his relationship with humanity and loves them; the other stories show gods who created humanity to do their work; there is no love.  (I got the previous points from the IVP Bible Background Commentary.)
• There is a serpent in NE creation accounts, but he is helpful to humanity, aiding Adapa in his quest for immortality (also notice the immortality motif – Tree of Life).  In Genesis, the serpent is the deceiver and the enemy of humanity.
• Mesopotamian stories suggest that Earth was gradually improving since creation; Genesis depicts a perfect world initially and then its downfall as a result of sin.
• God imparts his image to humanity in Genesis, though the gods do no such thing in NE myths.
• There are more, but I think I have made my point.

These differences are exceedingly important.  The Genesis creation account is set up in opposition to the creation stories of Israelite neighbors to establish the uniqueness of the God portrayed within.  The Israelites would surely have been familiar with the myths of their neighbors, and they were probably convinced by some of the stories.  But God had chosen the Israelites as his people, so obviously he wanted to point out what was wrong with the NE myths.  This is the purpose of Genesis.

As revealed in Genesis, God was all-powerful and singular; he was the only God.  He was loving, not enslaving.  He created Earth for man, not as a playground for himself.  He gave humanity something special, God’s own image, to set them apart from the rest of creation.  He rested because it was good, not because he needed it.  All of these truths are about the nature of God.  You may notice that there is little difference on other issues.  For instance, Genesis does not change the idea that humanity was certainly less powerful than God (or the gods).  It does not change the fact that man is dust (and to dust he shall return), fundamentally physical had it not been for God’s special endowment.  All of the main difference relate either to the nature of God or to God’s relationship with mankind.  It didn’t matter so much in what order God created.  What mattered was who God was and that he desired to have a relationship with mankind.  The God of Israel was unique, loving, powerful, and generous, all quite different than the many gods of Babylon.  But the presentation of Genesis is logical; the best counter-argument is parallel but different.

So I deduce that Genesis was intended to function as an alternative to other NE myths, not to explain the specific process in which God created.  Given the Israelites’ cultural setting, this interpretation seems much more logical than a literal one.  In fact, a literal interpretation appears to completely ignore the Near Eastern context, which makes the view suspect from the beginning.  Context, both within a work and without, is absolutely vital to understanding.  Indeed, I would imagine the story was meant not only to convince the Israelites of the true nature of God, but also to give the Israelites’ neighbors something to think about.

Today we have the tools to look at the Biblical creation account in its proper historical context.  The ancient Israelites had only the myths of their neighbors and the account of Genesis.  They could either accept Genesis or the other myths, or they could just not understand.  In our case, I think it is fair to say that God would expect us to use history and science to understand Genesis.

Appearance of Age

I would like to briefly discuss a topic that has come up in some of the comments which merits time on the main page.

One of the common explanations for what we see as an old Earth and old universe is that God created the universe mature so that it could properly function.  Many accept this explanation, but there are a host of serious problems that arise from it.

The first problem is the most common: if God created the universe mature (i.e., with “appearance of age”), then anything we observe in astronomy that is further than 10,000 light years away (or however old the universe is) must not have actually happened.  So all those wonderful images provided by the Hubble telescope that Christians (rightly) use to proclaim God’s majesty are really a hoax.  They never actually occurred!  When we see light from a galaxy that is one million light years away, we are seeing light that was produce one million years ago; that is the length of time the light takes to reach us.  But if the universe is not at least a million years old, then the light is showing us a glimpse of galactic history that never actually happened.  So if we see a supernova (basically an exploding star) that is many millions of light years away, then either it actually exploded many millions of years ago or God created a fictitious history for that exploding star.

There are a few responses to this.  Some may say that the light of stars was invaluable for early human civilization for navigation so it was important for God to provide the starlight, even if the light did not present an accurate picture of history.  This may be true for some stars, but what about all of the astronomical objects we have discovered that would never have been seen by human eyes were it not for telescopes?  We have observed objects that are around 10 billion light years away, which is one of the main reasons why we believe the universe is at least that old.  These objects were certainly not important for navigation, so that argument doesn’t seem to hold up.

Others present the idea that the speed of light was much greater in the past than it is today.  One problem with this is that we have no evidence for it other than that it helps the creationist standpoint (that seems interestingly assumption-based for a group that likes to attack the assumptions of science).  But there is a bigger problem.  Conservation of energy requires an inverse relationship between mass and the speed of light (summed up in Einstein’s famous E=mc^2).  As the speed of light increases, mass must decrease, that is, if we accept the laws of thermodynamics, and we know how fond creationists are of citing those laws in their own support.  If the speed of light was fast enough in the past to account for all of what we are able to observe today, then the mass of everything, including humanity, air, etc., would not have been great enough to keep us on the earth.  That does seem slightly problematic.  (See here.)

And there are some other issues as well.  What of craters?  Why would God go to all the trouble of making other planets and even the moon appear as if they had been bombarded for millions of years by meteors if in reality they hadn’t?  The craters don’t make any difference for creation.  And what about craters on earth, like the giant Chicxulub crater beneath the Yucatan Peninsula?  When did that happen if not 65 million years ago as indicated by geologists?  Did God just place it into the Earth so it looked like a meteor hit?  And why is there an iridium-rich layer around the world in the geologic record associated with this crater?  There is very little iridium in the Earth’s crust, but meteors can carry much higher quantities of iridium.  So it makes sense that if a meteor actually did hit it would leave iridium-rich fallout.  But maybe God is just tricking us again.

And that is the biggest problem I have with this creationist theory.  God is not a liar, and I find it difficult to consider God truthful while also believing that many of the physical observations we make today are based on fake events.  It seems much more logical that the events did actually occur, that there was a meteor that hit the Earth many years ago, that supernovae did really occur.  All it takes is a figurative interpretation of Genesis and these events are no problem whatsoever.  So why should we fight against the obvious?  It is much easier to accept science and God than it is to justify the arguments of creationism concerning appearance of age.

Corals and Coprolites

Here are a few other interesting fossil finds that are opposed to the creationist interpretation of history and a global Flood.

Coral Dating Techniques

This is perhaps the most intriguing information I have found corroborating dating techniques, but it also has significance for the Flood.  The rate of Earth’s rotation has been slowing with time and is currently slowing by about 0.005 seconds/year every year.  It should be noted that this number is not always constant, but it only varies slightly.  Looking back in time, then, Earth’s rotation was faster.  Thus, the days were shorter and there were more days per year (since a faster rotation equates to more days and nights every year).

So we can extrapolate backwards and figure out roughly how many days there would be in a year, say 370 million years ago.  All we have to do is multiply 370,000,000 by 0.005 to see how many extra seconds there would have been leftover after 365 rotations (1,850,000 extra seconds) and then change this into days – 21.4 extra days.  So 370 million years ago, there should have been around 387 days every year, and each day would have been 22.7 hours long.  For more info on this rate, see footnote 1, or check out this site.

This is where it gets interesting.  In 1963, J.W. Wells of Cornell put out a paper in Nature discussing some fossilized rugose corals, which lay down both daily and yearly rings (footnote 2).  Based on the number of rings, Wells concluded that the year then had 400 days, and each day had around 22 hours.  And guess what radiometric dating estimated for the date of the coral – approximately 370 million years old.  Taking into account slight variations in the decay of Earth’s rotation and the fact that the radiometric age is approximate, these values are startlingly close.

Wells’ study was one of the first of many similar studies which corroborate the changing lengths of days and the number of days in a year over time.  Studies using other corals and stromatolites offer a chronology of the number of days in a year and each day’s hourly length from 180 to 400 million years ago (showing years having between 381 and 410 days), and they match up both with the predictions based on the decay of Earth’s rotation and radiometric dating.  For the articles detailing this evidence, see the references section here.

This information poses a few problems for creationism.  First of all, if the Flood deposited all of the fossils simultaneously, fossils would not show a changing number of days in the year.  It takes a very long time for that .005 seconds per year to add up, so all fossils should corroborate a single number of days in the year if they were all fossilized at the same time, regardless of what that amount was.  But they don’t.  There is a range, as mentioned above, of 381 to 410 days.  As we go into deeper strata, the fossils indicate more days per year, and all the radiometrics match up.  It is simply ridiculous to believe these fossils were formed at the same time, but that is what a global Flood requires.

Fossilized Feces

Here is another great example of how creationists do not actually present positive evidence; instead they try only to attack evidence being produced by science.  There are quite a number of fossilized feces (coprolites), including this huge one found a few years back in Canada.  The scientists claim it came from a large carnivorous dinosaur.

As Ken Miller explains in his book Finding Darwin’s God, all creationists would have to do is go look through the ancient coprolites (and there are many thousands of them) and find something modern, anything at all – plant, animal, or otherwise – and they would have evidence that ancient and modern animals were living at the same time.  They would have evidence that things really had not evolved but were all together in the beginning.  They would have evidence that everything evolution has ever said was wrong.  For surely Mr. T-Rex would not discriminate between a tasty deer and a tasty small dinosaur.  It is preposterous to think that animals that were to appear early in the fossil record only ate animals and plants that would also appear early in the fossil record.  If they all lived simultaneously, there should be some evidence, however minute, in the coprolites of supposedly old animals eating supposedly modern animals or plants.  So why haven’t creationists looked through the coprolites?  Why haven’t they taken what is such an obvious opportunity to prove their theory?

Maybe they have, but if so, there is a reason we haven’t heard about it.  It’s because they didn’t find anything.  There has never been a coprolite that suggested in the tiniest way that, for instance, dinosaurs coexisted with humans, or that anything the fossil record shows as appearing late actually lived much earlier.  Coprolites are completely consistent with the rest of the fossil record and with radiometric dating.  Everything is in the correct place in time, just as it should be.

If creationism was really a good explanation for what we see, coprolites would be a great place to start proving it.

In conclusion, I would like to remind everyone that my reason for writing this blog is twofold:
1)    That evolution is not anti-Biblical or anti-God
2)    That creationism is not viable
The God portrayed in the Bible is a God of truth, and Christians should not settle for anything but the truth in all realms, including science.  If evolution is true, we must accept it, even if it means reinterpreting certain portions of scripture in a way unfamiliar to us (which should not change the message of scripture).  If creationism does not match up with what we know to be true, we must not accept it, even if at first glance it appears to match up with scripture.  In the end, scientific truth will be reconciled with scriptural truth, but perhaps in a way we did not expect.

Footnotes:

1.  Thwaites, William and Frank Awbrey. 1982. “As the World Turns: Can Creationists Keep Time?” Creation/Evolution, Issue IX (Summer 1982), pp.18-22 National Center for Science Education, P.O. Box 9477, Berkeley, CA 94709-0477

2.  Wells, J. W., 1963. Coral growth and geochronometry. Nature 197: 948-950.